Liability insurance for gun owners?

You can’t legally drive a car if you don’t have insurance, but should gun owners be held to the same standard? NPR’s Plant Money brings up an interesting idea that has been floating around the gun-control debate lately and asked economists to weigh in. A radio piece was aired today on Morning Edition.

Justin Wolfers, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan tells them:

“Another even more powerful approach is to recognize that the problem isn’t guns per se, but gun violence. Thus, instead of taxing guns, we should tax gun violence. Basically, this is the same as saying that we should make gun owners liable for any damage their guns do. Not only would this discourage some people from buying guns, it would lead those who do keep guns to be more careful with how they’re stored. Indeed, greater care would surely have kept Adam Lanza out of his mother’s cache. The problem, though, is that Nancy Lanza is neither with us to pay the damages her gun caused, nor could she afford to pay for the enormous damage her gun wrought in Newtown. And so the only way this solution works is if guns required mandatory liability insurance, much as we force car owners to buy insurance for the damage their machines wreak.”